Part of the Esquire 80, (exactly) 80 people, concepts, shoes, and foot-long sandwiches that define our time

There's nothing particularly wrong with being flawed, unglamorous, homely, vaguely mentally ill, morally unsteady. Ask Lena Dunham, whose character, Hannah, is making a virtual cupcake shop out of all that on Girls. Or Claire Danes's obsessively bent Carrie on Homeland. Ask the murdering, traitorous liar played by Keri Russell on The Americans. Or Melissa Leo, oral sex trader, on Louie. Or Taryn Manning, the evangelical nutjob with the meth teeth on Orange Is the New Black. None of these women is actually ugly, but they sure let the ugly in. And one way or another, this means they're playing all of us. Beautifully, too.